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"Social Foundations of Medicine and Religion"Wendy Cadge, Ph.D.Professor of SociologyBrandeis University

Wendy Cadge is a Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University and author of Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2012). She has studied and published regarding intercessory prayer, physicians' experiences of religion and spirituality, hospital chaplains, the prayers people write in hospital prayer books, religion and spirituality in palliative care, and the lived experiences of nurses. To learn more about Professor Cadge: www.wendycadge.com.

"Historical Foundations of Medicine and Religion"​Rebecca Messbarger, Ph.D.Director of Medical HumanitiesWashington University

Cultural historian Rebecca Messbarger is Director of Medical Humanities, and Professor of Italian, History, Art History, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Washington University. Her research centers on the Italian Enlightenment, in particular the rise of modern medicine, the intersection of art and anatomy, and the shifting roles of women in civic and academic life during the age. Her most recent monograph, The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (U of Chicago Press, 2010) traced the remarkable life of the 18th-century Bolognese woman from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomist and anatomical modeler for the University of Bologna’s famous medical school. Most recently, she co-edited the volume The Enlightment and Benedict XIV: Art, Science and Spirituality (U of Toronto Press, 2016).

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Dr. Sulmasy is the André Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics in the Departments of Medicine and Philosophy at Georgetown University, where he is a member of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics and a Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. He received his AB and MD degrees from Cornell University, com­pleted his residency, chief residency, and post-doctoral fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and holds a PhD in philosophy from Georgetown. He has previously held faculty positions at New York Medical College and the University of Chicago. He has served on numerous governmental advisory committees, and was a member of the U. S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues 2010-17. His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, informed consent for research, and spirituality in medicine. He is the author or editor of six books--The Healer’s Calling (1997), Methods in Medical Ethics (1st ed., 2001; 2nd ed., 2010), The Rebirth of the Clinic (2006), A Balm for Gilead (2006), Safe Passage: A Global Spiritual Sourcebook for Care at the End of Life (2014), and Francis the Leper: Faith, Medicine, Theology, and Science (2015). He also serves as editor-in-chief of the journal, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. In June 2017 he was appointed by Pope Francis as an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Now happily married, he was a Franciscan friar from 1985 to 2010.

"Empirical Foundations of Medicine and Religion"Tyler VanderWeele, Ph.D.Professor of EpidemiologyHarvard School of Public Health

Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, faculty affiliate of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Director of the Program on Integrative Knowledge and Human Flourishing. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance and applied economics, and biostatistics. His research concerns methodology for distinguishing between association and causation in observational research, and his empirical research spans psychiatric, perinatal, and social epidemiology; various fields within the social sciences; and the study of religion and health including both religion and population health and the role of religion and spirituality in end-of-life care. He has published over two hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals, is founder of the journal Epidemiologic Methods, and is author of the book Explanation in Causal Inference: Methods for Mediation and Interaction, published by Oxford University Press.